Short summary describing this game.

Overview

I Wanna Be the Guy is a free indie platformer game created and designed by Michael "Kayin" O'Reilly. The whole game is notorious for its difficulty, and walks the line between parody and homage to popular games from the 8-bit era. Most of the games levels, characters, music, and sound effects are taken directly from other games, and the difficulty and storyline of the game are reminiscent cariactures of the era.

Some games from which I Wanna Be the Guy has appropriated assets from include:

Story

The game's plot is told through cryptic and poorly written text during the games opening credits, satirizing the often clumsy translations from early 8-bit games. The opening credits themselves parody the opening credits from The Legend of Zelda, and the opening menu is reminiscent of Mega Man 2. The player is The Kid, who is on a quest to kill and become "The Guy."

Gameplay

The Kid controls like a standard twitch shooter-platformer. He can move left and right, turn in midair without horizontal momentum, jump (and double-jump), and shoot. Whereas other games of this genre include power-ups as a staple, the only power-ups to be found in the game are minor upgrades to the very small gun carried by the The Kid, such as one extra bullet on the screen at a time, or a slightly increased range. The player must get past each 'screen', a static section of the level, some with multiple exits, to progress further in the level. Almost all objects, characters, enemies and sometimes the environments themselves are designed to surprise and kill the player and make it nearly impossible to proceed.

An absurd amount of precision and timing is required, and even seasoned gamers can find themselves defeated multiple times on every screen of the game, as the game plays with player expectations.

Giant Mike Tyson

At the end of each level is a boss, which are generally altered or hybrid bosses from popular 8-bit games such as a Mecha Birdo or a giant Mike Tyson. Each boss has multiple attack patterns that come into play as it takes damage, with the sole exception of Mother Brain - which behaves essentially the same as in the original Metroid game, except each of the flying projectiles are instantly deadly.